Politics as a Vocation

As far as political… activities are concerned… Western experience has pre­sented two fundamental types of protagonist. On the one hand, there are individuals for whom those actives constitute an aspect of broader social position, generally a privileged one. Typically, such individuals do not identify closely with those activities, are not expressly trained and qualified for them, and do not make a particularly strong commitment to them.

On the other hand, we encounter individuals for whom political and administrative concerns lie at the centre of their life, and constitute the most significant way of positioning themselves in society, or of orienting and in a sense justifying their very existence. Essentially, the process of state-building, as Politics as a Vocation construes it, involves the progressive devaluing of the first type - let us call it‘notable’ - to the advantage of the second, to which we might attach the label‘professional’…